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RETIGIOUS GORTTT UD 
IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 


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RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 
IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 


ee 
PETE eM cha BO TURES lag, 
DELIVERED AT THE UNIVER- 
SITY OF NORTH CAROLINA 


WAY OF PRIN 
<r ‘79> 
APR 22 1924 






BY PE 
vo 
CHART ESSA EE NY DINSMORE 


PROFESSOR OF SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION 
OF LITERATURE IN THE YALE 
DIVINITY SCHOOL 





CUAPEUS LITT pINah Cots Ciitesn AAS 
THE ‘UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS 
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
OxrorD UNIVERSITY PREss 


TOrZi4 


CopyricuTt, 1924, By 
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS 


PrinteD By THE SEEMAN PRINTERY 
Duruam, N. C. 


DEDICATED 
TO 
DONATI DIS by MOUWUR MOU TIE 
LOVER OF BOOKS 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/religiouscertituOOdins 


THE McNAIR LECTURES 


The John Calvin McNair Lectures were 
founded through a bequest made by Rev. John 
Calvin McNair of the class of 1849 which be- 
came available to the University in 1906. The 
extract from the will referring to the foundation 
is as follows: 

“As soon as the interest accruing thereon shall 
by said Trustees be deemed sufficient they shall 
employ some able scientific gentleman to deliver 
before the students then in attendance at said 
University, a course of lectures, the object of 
which lectures shall be to show the mutual bear- 
ing of science and theology upon each other, and 
to prove the existence of attributes (as far as 
may be) of God from nature. The lectures, 
which must be prepared by a member of some 
one of the evangelic denominations of christians, 
must be published within twelve months after 
delivery, either in pamphlet or book form.” 


HANTS 


[ i 
oye / b 





PREFACE 


The lectures in this little volume were 
delivered before the University of North 
@arolinasinptiemspring oT lOZ2)9 Asi the 
purpose of the lectureship is to help the 
students in their religious thinking I had 
them constantly in mind during the prep- 
aration of these addresses. As the atten- 
dence is voluntary, I was beset with the 
dread of being so uninteresting as to lose 
both their attention and their presence. 
Therefore I aimed at simplicity, brevity 
and popular statement. Refinements in 
definition and subtle reasoning give little 
satisfaction to empty seats. In revising 
the addresses for publication I have re- 
written a few pages in the interest of 
Hari ma put motnenwiscmoavemnert. then 
unchanged. 

The reader may feel that in chapter 
three I have been unduly solicitous re- 


il PREFACE 


garding the word “knowledge,” but I be- 
lieve this word and the confidence it 
brings belong properly to religion. One 
does not wish to commit his life to a Grand 
Perhaps. If we have any intelligible pur- 
pose for existing in this world, it is that 
we may build up virtuous characters, that 
we achieve the fullest possible develop- 
ment of our personalities. But one can- 
not erect a house or a character on fog, 
neither can he live spiritually in a vacuum. 
The foundations must be solid if the su- 
perstructure is to be substantial and en- 
during. If religion is to transform the 
characters of men, she must deal in cer- 
tainties as well as in noble faiths. It can- 
not be that we have less assurance about 
what concerns us most than about matters 
of minor importance; that we can find 
our way so readily in the physical world 
to lose it when we pass the boundary 
line into the spiritual. Our conceptions 
doubtless change with increasing culture, 
but in our deepest experiences we have 
real knowledge of the Unchangeable. 


PREFACE ill 


It has always seemed to me that a man 
should be willing to face the actualities of 
life; that he should be eager to know the 
truth regardless of the effect on his theo- 
ries. It is foolish to cherish a delusion 
because it is pleasant. Therefore the 
spirit of dogmatism, both in science and 
religion, has been abhorrent to me. “No 
one of us is infallible,’ said Benjamin 
Jowett, “not even the youngest!’ And I 
have felt that the religious man could 
show his faith in God in no better way 
than by welcoming the truth given in 
every department of research. The Holy 
Ghost is the spirit of truth, and in this 
age, I am sure, our best scientific minds 
are his anointed prophets and are mani- 
festing his spirit and revealing his ways 
more truly than many of our statesmen 
or theologians. They are also restoring 
to us the lost gift of wonder. 

But too many scientific men claim the 
word “knowledge” as their peculiar pos- 
session and grant to the bewildered spirit 


IV PREFACE 
of man only the satisfactions of conjec- 
ture. In these pages I claim the word for 


religion. 
CHARLES ALLEN DINSMORE. 
YALE UNIVERSITY. 


CONTENTS 


WEA Rat 


PAGE 


TEE OR OG U Bethe ie Si eR ea ORME ONO Fre OVEN a fo ping 


THE INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE ON MODERN 
REDIGIOUSMAHOUGEC Lyra nen ee 1l 


Conflict between science and religion has its 
origin in the nature of man. Dogmatism both 
in religion and science. Definition of science. 
Her spirit, purpose and method. Limitations 
of her knowledge. Has modified our conception 
of the extention of the universe in time and 
space; has revealed the infinitely great and the 
infinitely little. Changed conception of man; 
of the Bible. Why the Bible will never be out 
of date. The scientific method has been intro- 
duced into theology. Sydney Smith quoted. 
Pasteur quoted. The religious man should be 
open minded. 


CHAPTER II 
Tue NATURE AND TRUTH OF RELIGION . . 37 


The religious impulse; its universality, its func- 
tion in life; gives liberty, joy, peace, power as 
an immediate possession. Is it an illusion? 
The Power that makes for righteousness; 
Moral virtues conform to the nature of things. 
The universe on the side of the moral ideal. 
Noblest minds not deluded. Personality of 
God. Herbert Spencer quoted. The good su- 
perior to the evil; the beautiful to the ugly. 
Shakespeare quoted. Our sense of dependence 
and our admiration for ideals. The Supreme 
Power is one with the Supreme Worth. John 
Tyndall quoted. 


v1 CONTENTS 
WITA ERIE EEE 


Wuat WE Know and WHat WE 
BELIEVE do 


Sir Leslie Stephen quoted. More than one path 
to knowledge. The “knowing faculties” not the 
exclusive possession of science. They belong 
also to religion. Definition of knowledge. 
To what degree science knows. We know 
aesthetic and moral values and forces which are 
spiritually discerned. Huxley quoted. Religion 
begins in faith and attains knowledge through 
experience. Testimony of Kant, Tyndall, 
Emerson. Had no help come from the Unseen 
religion would have died out. The lover, the 
artist, the saint know as well as the scientist. 
Religious knowledge not independent of charac- 
ter and moods, yet is in some respects superior 
to scientific knowledge. James quoted. A test 
of the claims of Christ. Future existence a 
ease Science has opened great spaces for this 
ope. 


RE LG OG Sark Th UD By 
UNG AONE GEO Ls ChE N Gy 





PROLOGUE 


The honor of delivering this course of 
lectures I sincerely appreciate, and I can 
show my gratitude no more genuinely 
than by adhering closely to the purpose of 
the founder. The foundation was the gift 
of Mr. John Calvin McNair, a graduate 
of this University of the class of 1849. 
His surname indicates that he sprang 
from that sturdy Scotch-Irish stock whose 
far-sighted patriotism and intense inter- 
est in education gave North Carolina the 
honor of establishing this the first univer- 
sity created in this country by legislative 
enactment. His Christian name, John 
Calvin, attests the stern piety of his an- 
cestors. One born of such blood and tra- 
ditions would perforce be dedicated from 
birth both to religion and the concerns of 
the mind. Calvinism was an iron system 
of far ranging and closely articulated 
logic, centered around a majestic vision of 


2 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


a Sovereign Almighty Will, and wherever 
that mighty creed cast its gloom and its 
glory there sprang up strong men conse- 
crated to truth and liberty. 

As Mr. McNair graduated in 1849, he 
was in the fulness of his intellectual vigor 
in 1859 when Darwin published his epoch- 
making book on the Origin of Species. 
That volume kindled a fierce controversy 
which was carried into every hamlet in 
Christendom, and caused every thinking 
man to examine the foundations of his 
creed. <A vigorous, militant Orthodoxy 
unhesitatingly joined issue with a science 
so revolutionary. A graduate of this Uni- 
versity, bearing such a name and having 
in his blood a strain which carries with it 
an inherent faith in a sovereign God, 
could have been no indifferent spectator 
of the earnest debate; the battle between 
the tradition of his fathers and the new 
affirmations must have been waged with ~ 
intense energy in his own soul. I surmise 
that during his mature years it was a very 
vital problem with him how to be loyal to 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 3 


the faith of his fathers, and yet be open- 
minded to whatever truths science had to 
teach. Doubtless he settled for himself 
and to his own satisfaction the relation- 
ship between the ancient creed and the 
new spirit abroad in the world. And I 
imagine that out of those years of intel- 
lectual struggle grew the purpose of this 
lectureship; namely, that the young men 
of this institution might, for generations 
to come, receive some help when they too 
should meet the same essential problem. 
For this debate between Science and Reli- 
gion will go on to the end of time. It is 
more than a struggle between two rival 
systems of thought; it is the adjustment 
of two distinct tempers of mind. The con- 
flict goes even deeper. It has its origin 
in the very nature of man himself. It is 
a debate between the critical intellect and 
that inner spirit which would fain be- 
lieve and aspire and rest. It begins when 
the boy in college feels the incompatability 
between his new knowledge and his boy- 
hood notions which he invariably con- 


4 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


fuses with the faith of the Church, and 
it revives whenever the things which are 
seen appear at variance with the things 
which are unseen—whenever the critical 
understanding questions the needs of the 
heart and the intuitions of the spirit. 

As stated by the founder, the purpose of 
this lectureship is “to show the mutual 
bearing of science and theology upon each 
other and to prove the existence of attri- 
butes (as far as may be) of God from 
Nature.” To draw from the material uni- 
verse proofs of the existence of God, or 
indications of his nature, is a task quite 
alien to my abilities. Every shoemaker 
should stick to his last. Only one who has 
spent a lifetime in scientific research is 
capable of speaking with any semblance 
of authority on such a subject. Only he 
can have first hand knowledge of estab- 
lished facts and of their legitimate impli- 
cations. It requires prolonged and dili- 
gent study in any department to form a 
dependable judgment upon the value and 
meaning of its data, Broadly speaking, 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 5 


there are two fields of intellectual interest: 
Man and his experiences, and Nature and 
her processes. There is no more insidious 
and dangerous temptation than for one 
who has spent his life in one of these de- 
partments of thought to venture into the 
other department for the purpose of pass- 
ing judgment upon its facts and conclu- 
sions. It is a sad sight to see a physicist 
come out of his laboratory, with the stand- 
ards and habits which befit his work, and 
go up onto that high tableland where the 
spirit struggles with its mighty problems 
of destiny, to pass pontifical judgments 
which only reveal his own limitations. On 
the other hand the scientist can suffer no 
more exquisite torture than to hear a the- 
ologian, who evidently knows nothing of 
the care needed to establish even the sim- 
plest fact, make sweeping generalizations. 

Happily from any such exhibition of 
ignorant presumption you will, I trust, be 
spared. Upon one phase of the first state- 
ment in the will—the mutual bearing of 
science and religion—I am, perhaps, not 


6 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


entirely incompetent to speak. I have 
therefore chosen for the theme of this 
and the two succeeding lectures the theme, 
Religious Certitude in an Age of Science. 
Tonight I shall offer some reflections on 
the Influence of Science on Modern Relig- 
ious Thought. Tomorrow night the topic 
will be, The Nature and Truth of Relig- 
ion. The closing lecture will consider 
What We Know and What We Believe. 

Let me state at the outset that I shall 
not attempt an intricate argument, clothed 
in unfamiliar words, addressed to the 
trained minds of experts, to establish 
some theory of knowledge. The purpose 
of this foundation, as I understand it, is 
to persuade the students of the University 
that they may be unfeignedly loyal to 
truth in whatever department of research 
it may be discovered, and at the same time 
possess the strength and consolation of 
religion. 

I am too well aware that I shall satisfy 
neither the dogmatists of science, nor of 
religion. The dogmatist is seldom open to 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 7 


argument. Dogmatism, as has been well 
said, is puppyism grown old. The re- 
ligious dogmatist is a familiar figure. 
His iron creed will never open to receive 
new truth, and the pain of a new idea is 
intolerable. But religion has no mo- 
nopoly of this spirit. The narrowest, the 
most opinionated, the most supercilious 
persons one finds in our seats of learning 
are the little scientists, who have sunk so 
deep into their constricted specialty that 
they cannot see beyond its confines. They 
burrow so long in their little mole-runs 
that their eyes grow dim: they lose all 
sense of the vastness of the universe; they 
think the cackle of their laboratory is the 
murmur of the world. They measure all 
life with the instruments of their trade. 
They mistake their generalizations for 
the philosophy of the universe. A witty 
writer has recently described those spe- 
cialists whose minds have become so ossi- 
fied that they miss the beauty and signifi- 
cance of the world: 


8 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


‘“‘A primrose by the river’s brim 
Primula flava was to him, 
And it was nothing more.” 


From the closed mind and the intolerant 
spirit may we be delivered. 


iPS INE EO EN GE OR SClENCHION 
MODERN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 


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THE INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE ON MODERN 
RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 


Let us first ask: What is science? In 
the popular sense—the sense in which it 
is used in Mr. McNair’s will—the term 
science refers to the methods and the re- 
sults of the Natural Sciences. It is that 
body of knowledge made up of verified 
and verifiable facts and their relation- 
ships which pertain to Nature and her 
processes, and to Man insofar as he is 
immersed in the physical order. It is 
“systematized knowledge of sense phe- 
nomena.” 

In a larger sense science is all verified 
and organized knowledge. In this ampler 
meaning it would include all the activities 
of religion which report themselves in the 
current of affairs. But we shall employ 
the word throughout these lectures in the 
narrower and popular significance. 


12 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


We are certainly living in a period that 
is preéminently an Age of Science. It is 
said that there have been more scientific 
discoveries in the past hundred years than 
in all preceding centuries. Yet the most 
precious gift of science to the world has 
not been her marvelous inventions, her 
amazing discoveries; her supreme bestow- 
ment has been the purpose, the spirit, and 
the method she has introduced into our 
thinking. 

Her purpose is definite. She aims at 
nothing less than a mastery over nature 
by the discovery of its laws. In this she 
has met with such extraordinary success 
that there has been born into the world an 
inextinguishable hope that one by one the 
old enemies of our race—pestilence, pov- 
erty, superstition—will be overcome, and 
that the conditions of existence will be 
more tolerable. 

She expects to achieve her dominion 
over the forces of nature by a definite pro- 
cedure; i.e., by discovering and verifying 
facts and setting them in their proper re- 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 13 


lationships. Then the technical arts will 
take the discovered facts and laws and 
put them to the service of man. The pre- 
cise methods of science differ according to 
the field of investigation. But in every 
department she uses those “methods which 
are established in the confidence of men 
whose occupation it is to investigate 
truth.” 

Yet the supreme contribution of science 
has not been her results or her method, 
but her spirit. I know of no finer state- 
ment of this spirit than in Huxley’s mem- 
orable letter to Kingsley: “Sit down be- 
fore a fact as a little child, be prepared to 
give up every preconceived notion, follow 
humbly wherever and to whatever abysses 
nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I 
have only begun to learn content and 
peace of mind since I resolved at all risks 
to do this.” The predominant trait of 
Huxley’s mind has been described as “a 
passion for veracity.” Absolute open- 
mindedness, the utter elimination in every 
investigation of all motives save love of 


14 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


truth, the subordination of all personal 
preferences and dislikes that might weigh 
in the balance, this is the scientific spirit. 
How similar it is to the religious spirit is 
apparent. Both demand complete self- 
surrender as indispensable to success; 
both require the receptiveness of a little 
child; both command their servitors to 
subordinate all material advantage to the 
higher interests; both enjoin utter mental 
integrity ; together they seek to control the 
world for the sake of humanity. 

The rewards also are similar. Working 
in this spirit of complete consecration to 
truth, the genuinely scientific mind attains 
a conviction of the order, the justice, the 
vastness of the universe, which in mo- 
ments of supreme discovery, changes into 
an ecstacy that is akin to the mystic’s 
vision of God. Witness Newton’s rap- 
ture as he approached the end of his cal- 
culations which were to demonstrate the 
law of gravitation, or Darwin’s exaltation 
of mind as he saw the verification of his 
theory of development through natural 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 15 


selection. A scientist, with a mind plod- 
ding and dry-as-dust because no light of 
the imagination streams through it, may 
be a thorough going materialist, but if to 
a clear understanding he adds wonder and 
reverence, his spirit is truly religious, and 
in his great moments he is not a stranger 
to that experience which the church calls 
the baptism of the Holy Ghost. For what 
is the Holy Ghost but the spirit of all 
truth? 

Working according to methods estab- 
lished in the confidence of competent men, 
science obtains a body of verified facts 
and laws which we call knowledge. But it 
is knowledge with very definite limita- 
tions. Science describes, she does not in- 
terpret. She deals with phenomena and 
processes, not with ultimate realities. “‘I 
went into my garden,” says an Eastern 
story, “to water the flowers, the drops be- 
came a rill, the rill a brook, the brook a 
river, and the river emptied into the sea.” 
Science follows the drop through all its 
courses to the ocean, but when it enters 


16 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


the Infinite and the Eternal she stops. 
She knows nothing of entities, or efficient 
causes, or of ultimate destinies. She does 
not claim to interpret values and the mean- 
ing of life. 

Let us glance at the influence exercised 
by science upon our religious thinking. 
It has been exerted first through the 
results she has established, and second, 
through the spirit she has introduced. 

Modern science began her revolutionary 
influence upon religious thought when in 
1543 Copernicus published his epoch-mak- 
ing book. Before his day men believed 
that they lived in a very complete and 
snug little universe. The earth was the 
centre, nine heavens revolved about it, 
above the stars was heaven and in the cav- 
erns of the earth was hell. Human his- 
tory was confined to some six thousand 
years, and a complete system of salvation 
had been revealed from heaven by means 
of which the elect would fill the vacancies 
created by the fallen angels. Since the 
days of Copernicus we have found that 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 17 


we are living in a universe inconceivably 
extended in space. Our thoughts are lost 
in the immensities of distance and magni- 
tude reported by the astronomers. 

This extension in space has been 
matched by an equally astonishing exten- 
sion in time. The Creator has left a rec- 
ord of his activities in the rocks and in the 
stars which compels all informed minds to 
relinquish the venerable chronology which 
asserts that only six thousand years have 
elapsed since creation. It is conjectured 
that it was between forty and twenty-five 
thousand years ago that a creature akin 
to us appeared upon the planet. Before 
the earth was fitted to be his habitation 
untold ages rolled by. The estimates of 
the age of the earth vary from one billion 
six hundred million to Lord Kelvin’s 
guess of four hundred thousand years. 
As time is reckoned, man is a modern 
upon the earth, for it is only some nine 
thousand years ago that a crude civiliza- 
tion appeared in Mesopotamia. This 
amazing expansion in space and time of 


18 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


the little universe of our fathers com- 
pletely shattered the contracted and closed 
system of theology which so _ perfectly 
conformed to it. The vastness of the ma- 
terial universe has given us a glimpse of 
the greatness of our God. We can no 
longer think of him as an Emperor en- 
throned above his universe. He is the 
indwelling spirit—a Being present in 
every point of his creation—transcendent 
only in the sense that he stands outside of 
our wills. 

Neither can we well think of him as 
the First Cause—for the law of continuity 
denies the validity of the conception of a 
beginning. God is first in the sense of 
being Supreme; first in importance. It is 
impossible to conceive of a condition when 
there was God, but no universe. We 
must think of the universe as always the 
living garment of an eternal God—who is 
the ground of all being, in whom all things 
subsist. 

But science has done something more 
than carry our thought to the rim of the 
outermost star; she has penetrated the in- 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 19 


finitely little, and discovered the Great 
Artificer, toiling busily in the workship of 
the living cell with a display of wisdom as 
elaborate as he manifests in the largest 
planet. He is in the infinitely small as 
well as in the infinitely large—the ever- 
present God. 


“Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than 
hands and feet.” 


We Worship a Being: 


“Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: 

A motion and a spirit that impels 

All thinking beings, all objects of all thoughts, 
And rolls through all things.” 


Our view of humanity has also radically 
changed. We are not, as our fathers 
thought, a race debased, creatures fallen 
from primitive excellence. Rather we are 
growing beings—we are the result of an 
ascent inconceivably long. But the sum- 
mit has not yet been reached. We glimpse 
a wonderful future before us. Around 
us and within we are aware of an immense 
treasure house of unreleased energies, and 


20 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


the marvelous achievements of the past 
lead us to believe that, if we can learn to 
control ourselves as thoroughly as we are 
controlling nature, the time may come 
when “beings who are now latent in our 
thoughts and hidden in our loins shall 
stand upon this earth, as one stands upon 
a foot-stool, and shall laugh and reach out 
their hands to the stars.”” The astounding 
discoveries of science, I think, are the di- 
rect cause of the inexpugnable conviction 
that has recently taken possession of our 
thinking, namely that man is a progressive 
being. Nothing seems impossible. The 
Great War has, probably, somewhat 
rudely shaken this belief. Yet neither in 
Jerusalem, nor in Athens, nor in the world 
up to our own time, was there any such as- 
surance of the latent possibility of man- 
kind for advancement, or any such con- 
viction of his ability to control the forces 
of nature. 

The spirit of science working upon the 
documents of our faith has given us a new 
Bible, immeasurably more human, signifi- 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 21 


cant and real than that which the first set- 
tlers brought to these shores. In no irrev- 
erent spirit, but actuated by the most earn- 
est desire to find out the truth, the most 
competent men in historical research— 
and they are earnestly Christian men— 
tell us that the former theory of plenary 
inspiration of the Scriptures is no longer 
tenable. These scholars find that God has 
not left himself without a witness among 
any people, but to the Jews he gave a spe- 
cial insight into the things of the spirit. 
Their great men were not generals or phil- 
osophers, but prophets. They interpreted 
God through nature indeed, but preémi- 
nently through the moral and spiritual 
nature of man. They conceived of an 
ethical Deity, a righteous and merciful 
God, Lord of the whole earth, who was 
using the nations in the interest of a re- 
deemed humanity. The Bible is the rec- 
ord of the growing insight, and the ac- 
cumulated experiences with the Eternal, 
of a uniquely endowed people. The 
Koran gives the point of view of one man, 


22 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


occupying a moment only in the process of 
history. The Analects of Confucius give 
the moral judgments of a single genius, 
at a definite period of time. The sacred 
books of India and Persia contain much 
noble philosophy and many penetrating 1n- 
tuitions of rare value. But the Bible is 
the only sacred book in the world that rep- 
resents a righteous God working through 
long periods of history for the moral re- 
demption of mankind. It is a drama as 
complete in its plot as Hamlet—but it is 
the only drama which reveals God as the 
chief actor in human history carrying for- 
ward a supreme work of redemption. 
“This people,’ said Matthew Arnold, 
writing of the Jews, “have a secret. They 
discerned the way the world was going, 
and therefore they have prevailed.” The 
secret they possessed was that the Ever- 
lasting is righteous and that national well- 
being and individual salvation depend 
upon conformity to a Power that makes 
for righteousness. The Bible is every 
man’s book because it keeps close to hu- 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 23 


man life and tells of experiences of many 
generations of men with God. 

It has a human element, for it is a story 
of man’s growing knowledge, his insight, 
his aspirations, and his faith. It is a di- 
vine book, because all human experiences 
are judged in their relationship to God, 
and God is declared to be acting in indi- 
vidual hearts and in the processes of his- 
tory for man’s well-being. 

Our etathersiinterpreted ithe | Bible) /in 
much the same manner which a lawyer 
uses in interpreting the statutes of North 
Carolina. It was all an exact statement 
of fact and truth, and was to be so under- 
stood. The King James version was 
printed as prose, and it was not until a 
hundred years later that it was discovered 
that the psalms were poetry both in form 
and spirit. It has also been ascertained 
that the Hebrews, like all ancient people, 
conceived and stated truths in forms of 
the imagination. Therefore we have in 
their literature fable, parable, legend, the 
traditions which mothers told to their 


24 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


children at eventide, the proverbs of their 
wise men, the songs of warriors, the alle- 
gories, the idyls, the stories by which liter- 
ary men enforced important truths. The 
discovery that the Bible is a library of 
many volumes, of many different types of 
literature, has led scholars to interpret the 
different books by their appropriate canon. 
Consequently we know much more accu- 
rately than did the men of a few gener- 
ations ago precisely how God dealt with 
this people. 

The Bible will never be out of date for 
four reasons. First, it is a record of the 
way in which man grew into his concep- 
tions of the true attitude toward God and 
toward his fellow. Religion is the rela- 
tionship of man with the Deity, and the 
true relationship is that of sonship ex- 
pressed in human service. This relation- 
ship once discovered and stated, there can 
be no further discovery in that line. 

Secondly, there are certain ultimates in 
religion which never can be superceded. 
In music we have the eight notes. These 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 25 


having been established, all musical ad- 
vance is in new combinations of the basic 
tones. In mathematics the multiplication 
table will never be improved, neither will 
tie point, or the: tine, or the circle; yihe 
Seven colors will never become out of date, 
but there will be many new arrangements 
of them. These ultimates in music, mathe- 
matics, painting, having once been found, 
are of permanent, unchanging value. All 
progress lies in using them with better 
understanding and in fresh combinations. 
So with religion. Faith, hope, and love 
are ultimates. We may grow into pro- 
founder conceptions of their meaning, we 
shall learn to apply them more wisely, but 
they are as truly ultimate factors in life 
as the point and the circle in art. They 
cannot be diminished or superceded; they 
are the essence of religion. There is noth- 
ing further in that direction. Having 
learned his true relationship to God and 
his fellow men, and the abiding and sover- 
eion dispositions of the spirit which make 
for salvation from the love of sin and the 


26 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


dominion of fear, has not man reached an 
unchanging stratum in religion? To this 
can anything be added? 

Yes, there is one more possible disclos- 
ure. Let faith, hope and love find a per- 
fect expression in a human being who 
lives his days as a true son of the Highest, 
and a genuine brother to humanity; let the 
ultimates of religion become flesh and 
blood in some Son of God and Son of 
Man, and something has come into history 
which can never be ignored or out of date. 

Thirdly, the Bible is a collection of the 
original documents which describe the 
process by which the religious ultimates 
became permanent in the world. It shows 
the expanding spirit of man gradually 
throwing off the bondage of fear and su- 
perstition, and with ever increasing won- 
der laying hold of the increasing revela- 
tion of truth. It contains the records 
which witness to a perfect life, a life in- 
carnating all the truths and forces of re- 
ligion. Now the original documents of an 
epochal movement never lose their value. 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE rp 


Another reason may be mentioned why 
the Bible will not be superceded. The 
book is much more than a collection of his- 
torical documents describing the process 
by which the final truths of our faith came 
into the world. It is literature, and parts 
of it are literature of the very highest 
order. Now great literature comes down 
through the centuries in ageless youth be- 
cause it radiates spiritual power. You will 
recall De Quincey’s distinction between 
the literature of knowledge and the liter- 
ature of power. The distinction is inter- 
esting, but in fact there is no literature 
dealing simply with knowledge. No book 
becomes literature until its truths stir the 
emotions, the fountains of power. Books 
containing information merely do not en- 
dure, for having acquired the facts, we 
throw the book away. Books live, not for 
the knowledge they contain, but for the 
moods they induce. The eternal volumes 
are those which lift us into the timeless 
world by the exalted moods they create in 
us. To attain the mood we must read the 


28 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


book. Preéminently is this true of the 
Bible. Its writers were men of spiritual 
genius profoundly moved by the very 
spirit of the truth of which they wrote; 
they were aquiver with moral passion. 
The word of God was on their lips and 
his spirit was in their hearts. To attain 
the gospel moods there is no better way 
than to read the gospel books. Here we 
find the power to become sons of God, the 
strongest inducements to love our fellow 
men and to hope for a glorious future. 
The final truths of religion cannot be 
stated with more beauty, simplicity and 
spiritual power than they are stated in the 
noblest passages of the Old and New 
Testaments. Supreme truths, fashioned 
in forms of perfect beauty, are not for- 
gotten. They have that kind of fire in 
them which the world will not let die. 

The second method by which science 
has influenced religious thought is 
through the introduction of the scientific 
spirit and the scientific method into the- 
ology. Let us bear in mind that theology 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 29 


is ever to be distinguished from religion, 
as botany is distinct from flowers. The- 
ology is our theory of religion, as botany 
is the science of flowers. 

The theologies of the past have been 
discarded one by one, not through lack of 
logical articulation, but because these 
mighty structures were reared upon shaky 
premises. Discredit the major premise 
and the superstructure collapses. Grown 
wise by the experience of the past, and 
thoroughly. imbued with the scientific 
spirit, our leading thinkers in the religious 
world do not assume some broad general- 
ization, such as the Fall of Man, or the 
sovereign decrees of the Almighty, upon 
which to build imposing systems of 
thought. On the contrary, they are keep- 
ing very close to facts of human experi- 
ence; they deal almost exclusively with the 
near end of truth. And while undoubt- 
edly their interpretations of the facts and 
truths may change with advancing knowl- 
edge, the foundations are secure. Their 
appeal is not to dogma, but to life. 


30 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


Let me say, in conclusion, that the Age 
of Science has also been an age of un- 
precedented religious activities. When 
science made her tremendous affirmation 
that there had been no break in the cre- 
ative process from the nebula up to man, 
there were not lacking religious leaders 
who hailed this ampler interpretation of 
the orderly ways of the Creator with en- 
thusiasm. “This law of growth,” said one 
of the most distinguished preachers in 
America, “is what Paul and I have been 
looking for for some time.” Christian 
scholars at once applied this theory of 
development to the documents and to the 
institutions of their faith, with the re- 
sult that never since primitive Christianity 
have there been so many spiritually 
minded people free from the trammels of 
dogmatism, and so possessed of the essen- 
tial spirit of all true religion. The new 
freedom, the new sense of reality, the 
broader outlook gave immense impulse to 
religious activities. Never has the Church 
been nearer the heart of the faith, never 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE nna & 


has it worked more wisely or more exten- 
sively for the establishment of the King- 
dom of God upon the earth. 

The witty divine, Sidney Smith, walk- 
ing one day through the streets of Lon- 
don, heard two women quarreling. Each 
was in her own house, and the houses were 
on opposite sides of the street. ‘““Those 
two women will never agree,’ remarked 
the wit, “for they occupy different premi- 
ses.” In former days when religion dwelt 
in a gloomy tenement of uncharitable dog- 
matism, and science lived in a new and 
somewhat shaky house across the way, 
they did shout invectives at each other. 
But that time is passing. There are com- 
mon premises upon which they can live to- 
gether in peace, with science on the ground 
floor and religion in the upper story—sci- 
ence keeping the premises in good order 
and religion supplying the motive and the 
home atmosphere. 

The common house is the spirit of man. 
Man is the reconciliation of science and 
religion. Science shows him the laws of 


32 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


the world in which he lives and which he 
must obey. But above this order of time 
and sense there is another world of values 
and spiritual forces which he knows as 
truly as he knows the temporal order. 
Here he finds an interpretation of the 
meaning of the life, a refuge in times of 
distress, lofty motives which hold him true 
to his ideals, and power pouring into his 
being from the reservoirs of the Unseen. 

All scientific minds of the first rank are 
religious in their purpose of utter loyalty 
to the truth, and in their emotion of won- 
der, reverence and humility, and many of 
them have possessed to the full the con- 
solation and the strength which a spiritual 
vision of man and the universe gives. 

It is a long and brilliant roll from New- 
ton, who wrote an appendix to his Prin- 
cipia expressing his faith in God, whose 
works he had profoundly studied, to Pas- 
teur who wrote: 

“There are two men in each of us; the 
scientist, he who desires to rise to the 
knowledge of nature through observation, 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 33 


experiment and reasoning; and the man 
of feeling, of belief; the man who mourns 
his dead children and who cannot prove 
that he will see them again, but who be- 
lieves that he will, and lives in that hope— 
The two domains are distinct and woe to 
him who tries to let them trespass on each 
other.”’ 

There is only one attitude for a relig- 
ious man to take in this age of science. 
Let him not stand with closed mind and 
closed fist in front of the venerable theo- 
ries and systems of the fathers, deter- 
mined to defend them to the last breath. 
Rather let him remember that the Holy 
Spirit is the spirit of truth, and that he 
works wondrously in every age. His 
glory shines not only from the pages of 
the Old and the New Testament, but also 
from the Oldest Testament written by the 
finger of frost and fire in the rocks, and 
from the Newest Testament as he dis- 
closes his nature and purposes through 
the minds of saints and seers who have 
lived since the canon of the Scriptures 


34 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


closed. If we believe in the Holy Ghost, 
we must believe that more of his light 
will ever break from every Testament. 
All light comes from one source and har- 
monizes with itself; let us receive it with 
eladness. 

No one believes more profoundly than 
I doin the faith once delivered to the saints. 
It has been handed down from generation 
to generation by a glorious succession of 
redeemed men and women. The essentials 
of that faith can be realized in experience 
and cannot be overthrown. But these un- 
changing truths are interpreted in every 
age according to the language and point 
of view of that period. ‘Therefore the 
forms of religious philosophy are con- 
stantly being modified, yet the substance 
changes not. 


“Our little systems have their day 
They have their day and cease to be.” 


Science will greatly modify our theories 
and speculations, she can never disturb 
the deeper interests of the soul. Man is 


INS ANT AGE OR SCIENCE 35 


incurably religious. He isa little creature 
living in a universe terrible in its vastness 
and in its power. He asks great questions. 
He cannot be persuaded that they will re- 
main unanswered. He will never believe 
that he has light to find his way amid the 
things that are temporal, only to lose it 
amid the things eternal. Confidently he 
will ever hold that the light within him, 
and in the spiritual geniuses of history, is 
the true light, given for safe guidance. 

The tragedy of history has been that the 
church has so often mistaken the tempo- 
rary form of her faith for the eternal sub- 
stance. She has neglected her gospel of 
love in her fierce zeal for dogma. 

Let us also never forget that priests and 
theologians and laymen cannot pass judg- 
ment on the seasoned conclusions of 
science. Only those are competent to 
form opinions upon the facts and laws of 
any department of learning who have 
made the verification of its truth their 
occupation. The rest of us must accept 
the testimony of the competent. 


36 - RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


But no changes in our astronomy will 
put out the stars, and no advance in scien- 
tific knowledge will ever extinguish the 
lights of the spirit by which man has 
always and must ever live. 

“As for knowledge” says Euripides,” I 
bear her no grudge. I take joy in the pur- 
suit of her. But the other things are 
great and shining.” 


THE NATURE AND TRUTH OF 
RELIGION 


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THE NATURE AND TRUTH OF RELIGION 


In front of the Art Museum in Boston 
is a bronze statute of extreme beauty and 
suggestiveness. It is the figure of an 
Indian seated upon his pony, stretching 
out hands in prayer and adoration to the 
Great Spirit.. Three orders of being are 
represented by the sculptor. There is the 
solid earth, inanimate, insensate. Upon it 
stands the pony, belonging to a higher 
order of existence. Made of the dust of 
the ground, in him is life. He can adjust 
himself to a physical environment. Yet 
the beauty of the sun-set means nothing to 
him, nor the delicate tint of the flowers. 
The Indian is formed both of the dust of 
the earth, and of living cells like the ani- 
mal. But a spark disturbs his clod. In 
his breast there is the push of an impulse 
to which the pony is an utter stranger. 


40 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


He has yearnings and aspirations which 
reach above himself. He is aware of a 
relationship with the Universe. He con- 
ceives of a Great Spirit not unlike himself 
—stronger, wiser, eternal—to whom his 
heart goes out in emotions of awe, rever- 
ence, adoration. In the dark breast of 
this primitive man there is a sense—im- 
perfect, indeed, but real—of a whole order 
of values and forces, which is as lifted 
above the animal upon which he is astride 
as the animal is elevated in the scale of 
being above the earth. 

Modern science knows the chemical ele- 
ments of the ground. She tells wonderful 
stories of the evolution of the horse, fol- 
lowing his ancestors back through three 
millions of years. She can even describe 
the molecular movements in the brain of 
the Indian. But here science must pause. 
She has never been able to bridge the 
chasm between the molecules of the brain 
and a state of consciousness. The psy- 
chologist has penetrated very deeply into 
the nature of man, but there are some 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 41 


facts of that Indian’s consciousness which 
he cannot explain, and it does not seem 
probable that he ever will explain. 

The impulse which leads the savage to 
pray and to worship a Spirit akin to him- 
self is part of the furniture of human 
nature. It has maintained itself in every 
age and in every race,, *You may find,” 
says Plutarch, “communities without 
walls; without letters; without kings; 
without money; with no need of coinage; 
without acquaintance with theatres or 
eymnasia; but a community without holy 
rite, without a God, that uses not prayer; 
without sacrifice to win good or to avert 
evil—no man ever saw or will see.” Re- 
ligion begins in this response of man to 
what he conceives to be a supernatural 
Power or Powers, the response leads to 
an attitude, and the attitude results in ex- 
periences which involve the whole man— 
his thoughts, his emotions, his activities. 

This religious impulse may be very fee- 
ble in some men, for we differ in our en- 
dowments. Some are blind to color and 


42 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


others are deaf to music, and yet the re- 
ligious response is seldom lacking in any 
human bosom. The Great Mystery sur- 
rounds us all and all have some sense of it. 

Now every impulse of our nature, be- 
cause it has survived in so long and so 
rough a journey, must serve some useful 
function in life. We may have within us 
some scrapped appendages, or organs 
which were once of use and have now been 
discarded and are carried as useless bag- 
gage, but an impulse as vital, as universal, 
as apparently indestructable as the relig- 
ious impulse must serve some important 
purpose in the furtherance of life. What 
are the chief functions of religion? What 
purpose does the religious impulse and its 
satisfaction serve in enabling man to sur- 
vive and progress? 

Gilbert Murray, in his charming essay 
entitled Religio Grammatici, declares that 
the chief purpose of religion is to give 
liberty. ‘Man is imprisoned in the ex- 
ternal present: and what we call a man’s 
religion is, to a great extent, the thing 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 43 


which offers him a secret and permanent 
means of escape from that prison, a break- 
ing of the prison walls which leaves him 
standing, of course still in the present, but 
in a present so enlarged and enfranchised 
that it becomes not a prison, but a free 
world.” Religion is the power by which 
men have overcome the world. From the 
primitive man who employed his religion 
to escape from fear, or bad luck, up to 
Jesus who said that the purpose of his 
mission was to give life and life more 
abundantly, and through all the centuries 
succeeding, religion has given men release 
from their prison, from the body of this 
death. 

More than this, with liberty have come 
peace, joy, and a consciousness of power. 
Note the significance of this. Liberty, 
peace, joy, power, these are the permanent 
and loftiest aspirations of men. Liberty 
has been the banner under which the 
suffering ages have fought. It is the ideal 
toward which they have toiled. The com- 
ing of peace on the earth seems a far- 


Ad RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


away dream. To get power and joy men 
search earth and heaven. Yet the men 
who have that quality which we recognize 
as religious have as an immediate posses- 
sion those values which are the aspiration 
of the race and the noblest goal of history. 

The religious mind has this instant 
possession because it conceives itself inter- 
sphered in Something higher than itself 
upon which it can repose with confidence, 
and from which comes spiritual vitality. 
This Something, greater in power and 
higher in worth, out of which we came 
and which controls our destiny, faith calls 
God. From this sense of God issue man’s 
interpretations of the meaning of life and 
all his theologies; by it are kindled those 
emotions which take form in love and 
worship; it frames the most powerful 
motives in the conduct of life. 

Take from the religious man his firm 
conviction in the existence of a great and 
good God who sustains him in this mortal 
combat, and you take all glory and worth 
from life, and choke the chief springs of 
power. 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 45 


A few rare spirits could still confront a 
godless universe with pagan courage, 
striving to build up a moral civilization in 
the great and terrible wilderness of exis- 
tence, but the vast majority of men would 
say “Why fight with these beasts of Ephe- 
sus, let us eat, drink, and be merry, for 
tomorrow we die.” 

Is it all an illusion? The question goes 
to the very roots of our being. Has man 
projected his own image and his passion- 
ate desire upon the black and unreplying 
void above him, or is there, as our faith 
affirms, a Reality surpassing our noblest 
thoughts? 

You and I would be untrue to our col- 
lege training and to the best spirit of our 
age, if we did not desire above all things 
else to know the truth. Certainly we do 
not wish to live in a fool’s paradise, even 
if it is comfortable. 


“Play no tricks with thy soul, O Man 
Let facts be facts and life the thing it can.” 


In testing the reality of religion it is 
well to bear in mind that the question is 


46 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


not one regarding the being of a Reality 
which faith calls God. It needs no argu- 
ment to prove that there is a vast Some- 
thing, out of which we came, which influ- 
ences every action of our lives, and to 
which at last we shall return. We are as 
sure of this Other as we are of our own 
existence. Our consciousness of self 
makes us aware of an Other than our- 
selves. The vital question is not, “Is there 
a God,” but “What kind of a God is there? 
What is the nature of this Something out 
of which we have emerged? Is it friendly 
to us? Does it know anything about us? 
Does it care for us individually?” The 
religious consciousness has universally 
assumed that this Other is not entirely 
unlike us, and faith at its best affirms that 
God is righteous, that his purposes, slowly 
unfolding through the ages, are good, and 
those who trust in him shall not be 
ashamed. 

Is this a true insight? Does the evi- 
dence support the conviction? 

We must remember that each depart- 
ment of research has its own proper 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 47 


method of verification. What is of worth 
in music and poetry is established by other 
means than those employed in a biological 
laboratory, so we must not attempt to test 
the validity of a declaration of faith as we 
would a proposition in chemistry. There 
is only one way to establish fundamental 
truths either in ethics or religion, and that 
is by an appeal to life. If God is found at 
all, he will be found in human experience; 
in an experience involving the whole of a 
man and the whole of humanity. The acid 
test of life, and life under all conditions,— 
than this there can be nothing more 
searching. 

The following considerations have to 
my mind convincing weight. Man has 
been a long time in this world, thousands, 
tens of thousands of years. He is part 
of the universe. He is woven out of 
the living tissue of this system of things, 
and partakes of its character. His body 
is fashioned in the mould of nature, and 
his life depends upon his obedience to the 
forces of the physical order playing 


48 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


through him and about him. The ener- 
gies of the Universe have likewise built 
up his moral being and made him sensitive 
toa moral law. He is as vividly aware of 
the moral order as of the physical and 
upon equally valid evidence. Of its au- 
thority his conscience is a witness. By 
obeying it man achieves those ethical vir- 
tues which time has proved to be the basis 
of civilization and prosperity. You can- 
not find in literature a mind of the first 
class which is lacking in an instinct for 
the moral law—its existence, its sanctity, 
its commanding authority. This is the 
greatness of Aeschylus and Sophocles. It 
was the power of Moses and the prophets. 
By obedience to these ordinances which 
have their witness in every man and are 
the frame-work of our social organization, 
certain virtues have been evolved. The 
mills of the ages have ground but they 
have not destroyed them, thus indicating 
their conformity to the nature of things. 
These virtues make saints and heroes— 
the finest products of our humanity. This 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 49 


Power out of which we came has laid 
down the lines along which we must 
advance if we would have physical well- 
being: it has laid the tracks along which 
we must move to attain the virtues which 
we most prize: it has also put into our 
being an ideal of the perfect—a vision of 
something better further on. These ideals 
of moral worth did not spring out of the 
dust of the earth, they did not originate 
in experience, they transcend it. 


“In man’s self arise 
August anticipations, symbols, types 
Of a dim splendor ever on before.” 


Working within us is the push of the 
Power not ourselves to participate in these 
ideals of supreme value. Our science is 
constantly changing, but there never fails 
a succession of poets and prophets calling 
upon humanity to catch the vision splendid 
and to move upward to the heights of 
virtue. 

More than this, when a man seeks to 
cooperate with this Power that is work- 


50 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


ing for righteousness, he finds that the 
latent energies of his nature are released. 
At the close of the war a Governor of one 
of our states, addressing the returned sol- 
diers, used these memorable words, “We 
welded our selves to our duty as by fire, 
and there stole into our minds a supernal 
illumination, and into our hearts a mys- 
terious strength.” This experience is ever 
reproduced in all who weld themselves as 
by fire to duty, to truth, to beauty, to 
righteousness. The illumination and the 
mysterious strength never fail. “I con- 
sidered myself,” said John Milton when 
he threw himself into the struggle for 
English liberty, “‘a member incorporate of 
that truth whereof I was persuaded.” 
When one makes such a complete dedica- 
tion of himself to truth his brain grows 
clear, his will strong, and something of the 
splendor of truth descends upon him. 

The long experience of man goes to 
show that what we call the moral virtues 
—righteousness and goodness in all their 
forms—have survival value. They con- 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE TNL 


form to the Nature of Things. When 
man battles for them he is not struggling 
in a vacuum, he is sustained. He finds 
“the Friend behind phenomena” cooper- 
ating with him. 

Because of this long experience his 
mind has been so fashioned that he can- 
not believe that the Supreme Power is 
lacking in those qualities which are of 
supreme worth. Shall not he who formed 
the conscience do right? Men make sacri- 
fices for righteousness and truth in per- 
fect confidence that they will prevail. Men 
assume, instinctively, that the universe is 
on the side of the moral virtues. They 
will not act on the contrary assumption. 
Because this faith lasts amid all changes 
and discouragements and produces great 
and shining characters and is fertile in 
honorable activities, it must be essentially 
true. Falsehood is not a_ permanent 
builder. 

This intuitive assumption is a clear and 
steady conviction of the elect minds of the 
race. The men who have served most 


we RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


faithfully and with the greatest personal 
devotion the cause of beauty, truth, good- 
ness are the most certain that these values 
are wrought into the very constitution of 
the world and reflect the nature of the 
Eternal. Men cannot permanently think 
to the contrary, or act on any other sup- 
position. The moral virtues are indis- 
pensable to the preservation of the race. 
Humanity can no more survive and pro- 
egress without them than it can dispense 
with air and water. 

If the Universe is not on the side of the 
moral ideal, then the finest and noblest 
minds in humanity have been the most de- 
luded. Socrates was wrong when he said 
that “no evil can befall a good man either 
in this world or the world to come.” The 
martyrs of every noble cause have need- 
lessly cast away their lives. Jesus was the 
most foolish and deceived of all when he 
died on Calvary to reconcile men to a 
fatherly God. 

We are certainly put to intellectual con- 
fusion, if philosophers and seers, who by 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 53 


universal consent are regarded as the 
noblest exponents of our humanity, were 
but blind leaders; if the ideals which have 
been the inspiration and strength of the 
world do not contain that which is of per- 
manent worth. We lesser men look up to 
the sovereign spirits of the race for light 
and power, and these elect and radiant 
ones who stand on the very summit of 
human excellence we find are all looking 
up—not into the void, but to a divine ex- 
cellence from whence cometh their help. 
A conviction which lasts amid all changes 
and discouragements, produces the great- 
est characters, and is prolific in noblest 
activities, must be fashioned of truth. 
Falsehood, illusion, build neither charac- 
ter nor civilization. As the Power that 
worketh in us sustains us in our effort 
after truth, righteousness and goodness 
may we not hold the faith that it is true 
and righteous and friendly to our divinest 
aspirations ? 

Thus far we have spoken of God as 
Power. In this form he manifests him- 


54 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


self in the physical world, but we are justi- 
fied in thinking of him through the loftiest 
symbol we know, which is spirit. The 
Creator is not less than the noblest of his 
works. A fountain cannot rise higher 
than its source. Of the universe as we 
know it man is the ripest product, and 
what is highest in man is the best revela- 
tion we have of what is highest in the 
universe. When therefore we think of 
God through the terms of the human spirit 
we have taken the loftiest symbol we 
know. We have used our clearest, largest 
lens to look upon the Everlasting. He 
may be inconceivably more than our high- 
est thought; he cannot be less. The term 
“spirit” is no more anthropomorphic than 
“power.” And our right to use it stands 
the test of experimentation. When we 
try out our daring venture of faith we 
find that the rational structure of the 
world is not alien to our minds. In our 
discoveries we are but thinking God’s 
thoughts after him. We can interpret na- 
ture because the intelligence there at work 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 5 


is akin to our own. When we affirm with 
Jesus that “God is a Spirit”? we have em- 
ployed the most comprehensive symbol we 
possess. | The Eternal/as like this’) not’.a 
being inferior. As Herbert Spencer has 
so well said: “The choice is not between a 
personal God and Something lower, but 
between a personal God and Something 
higher.” 

But it may be objected, the argument 
that God is righteous and good because 
these are forces in the world is a two 
edged sword. Evil and ugliness are also 
here, and most patent forces are they. 
True. But the universe is not indifferent. 
Two streams, it has been said, flow forth 
from the Everlasting. One is good and 
the other is evil, and we should be hope- 
lessly puzzled as to the nature of the 
source of all things, did not a third stream 
go with them—the conviction that the 
good is superior to the evil. We are so 
constituted that we believe that the good 
is better both in value and power. We 
find that evil is self destroying, the good 


56 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


is self perpetuating. “The evil that men 
do in their lives,” said Mark Antony, 
“lives after them. The good is oft in- 
terred with their bones.” It may seem so 
for a day, or a generation, but it is not 
true ultimately. The evil that made Rome 
a cesspool has been absorbed in the earth. 
The poetry, the oratory, the justice, the 
heroism of Rome are still a beneficent 
force. The evils which destroyed Athens 
have gone glimmering into oblivion; the 
beauty of her temples, the wisdom of her 
philosophers, the insight of her poets, are 
part of the wealth of today. “Only the 
virtues of the just smell sweet and blossom 
in their dust.” 

Here is a very interesting and sug- 
gestive fact of our human nature. Wher- 
ever sin abounds grace does much more 
abound. Let an evil be done and immedi- 
ately reserves of righteous energy are 
released to meet and defeat the intruder 
and thus the world moves upward. 

This brings us to what to my one mind 
is most persuasive evidence that the Power 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 57 


which works in history is good. Samson 
put it dimly in his famous riddle. “Out 
of the eater came forth meat, and out of 
the strong came forth sweetness.” This 
world of ours is so constituted that good 
does come out of evil; weakness turns into 
strength, darkness is transmuted into 
light. Every sad experience of life is the 
raw material out of which the wise and 
valiant spirit of man can fashion wisdom, 
eoodness, and moral heroism. “There 1s 
some soul of goodness in things evil,” said 
Shakespeare, “would men observingly dis- 
til it out.” This insight of our greatest 
poet is true, and it is true because there is 
the soul of goodness at the heart of our 
universe. The valor of the moral will of 
man in its struggle for perfection finds 
latent in the grimmest facts, and stream- 
ing through the most unpropitious circum- 
stances, a cooperating spiritual energy by 
which ugliness is turned into beauty and 
evil becomes the instrument of good. 

Let me put in a paragraph what I have 
said so imperfectly in this lecture. As 


58 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


true men and students we joyfully accept 
all the results that science can establish. 
But science works within very definite 
limits. She describes processes, but she 
does not interpret meanings. She prop- 
erly knows nothing of the ultimate things. 
But man has moral and emotional claims 
which his scientific intellect cannot satisfy. 
He must have unity for his thought and 
faith. He must build a house to shelter 
his spirit from the terror of the Great 
Mystery surrounding him. It often seems 
pitifully small and inadequate compared 
with the Vastness, yet he would found it 
upon a Rock. 

Confronting this great and strange uni- 
verse he has two distinct and profound 
emotions. One is that of dependence upon 
the Power whence he came, which shapes 
his destiny and which he knows in daily 
and most intimate experience. The other 
emotion is that of admiration for some 
thing higher than himself—for ideals of 
worth. The questions he wishes answered 
are these: “Is the Supreme Power one 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 59 


with the Supreme Worth? Has it any 
moral character and purpose whatever? 
Are our most shining ideals merely ema- 
nations of our brains, or are they of inter- 
est to the Power not ourselves’? We 
have tried to show that this Power flows 
through us and through the world creat- 
ing these ideals of goodness, truth, beauty, 
testing their validity, proving their worth, 
and sustaining us in our struggle to 
achieve them. The Supreme Power and 
the Supreme Worth are alike expressions 
of the Reality out of which we came, 
which shapes our natures and our destiny, 
which does not leave us without reinforce- 
ment in our battle for the ideal, and which 
our faith calls God—righteous because he 
formed both the moral law and the con- 
science that responds to it, good because 
he planted the dream of the perfect in our 
minds and helps us in our mortal battle, 
our Father because his thoughts are not 
entirely alien to our thoughts. Him we 
reverence because we find liberty, joy, 
peace and security in the secret of his 
presence. 


60 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


Let me close by using the eloquent 
words of one of the most famous scientists 
of the last century, John Tyndall. After 
affirming, in his memorable Belfast Ad- 
dress, that man has certain “unquenchable 
claims of his moral and emotional nature 
which the understanding can never sat- 
isfy,” he continues: ““The world embraces 
not only a Newton, but a Shakespeare— 
not only a Boyle, but a Raphael—not only 
a Kant, but a Beethoven—not only a Dar- 
win, but a Carlyle. Not in each of these, 
but in all, is human nature whole. They 
are not opposed, but supplementary—not 
mutually exclusive, but reconcilable. And 
if, unsatisfied with them all, the human 
mind, with the yearning of a pilgrim for 
his distant home, will still turn to the 
Mystery from which it has emerged, seek- 
ing so to fashion it as to give unity to 
thought and faith; so long as this is done, 
not only without intolerance or bigotry of 
any kind, but with the enlightened recog- 
nition that ultimate fixity of conception is 
here unattainable, and that each succeed- 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 61 


ing age must be held free to fashion the 
mystery in accordance with its own needs 
—then, casting aside all the restrictions of 
Materialism, I would affirm this to be a 
field for the noblest exercise of what, in 
contrast with the knowing faculties, may 
be called the creative faculties of man. 
Here, however, I touch a theme too great 
for me to handle, but which will assuredly 
be handled by the loftiest minds, when you 
and I, like streaks of morning cloud, shall 
have melted into the infinite azure of the 
Dastes 

These are memorable words. The low- 
liest as well as the loftiest minds turn 
towards the Mystery for an explanation 
of the problems of life and for refuge 
from its storms, and not only minds of 
every country, but minds of every age. 
Four thousand years ago these words 
were written on a Babylonian tablet; 
“Trembling one pursued by evil, dash 
thyself against the bosom of thy God.” 
Some fifteen hundred years later this cry 
came out of the midst of Judah; “As the 


62 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


hart panteth after the water brooks, so 
panteth my soul after thee, O God!” Out 
of the storms of the Latin civilization 
Augustine exclaimed: “We came forth 
from thee, O God, and our hearts are rest- 
less until they rest in thee.” This relig- 
ious impulse is universal; it is part of the 
nature of man. Would it have continued 
vital during all these milleniums of ex- 
perience, if it had found no valid satisfac- 
tion? An appetite indicates that some- 
thing exists to satisfy it. In a world 
where there is no water there would be 
no creature that thirsteth. Men would not 
hunger and thirst for God had they never 
experienced more than an illusion of satis- 
faction. Had nothing ever come from 
“the realms of help” through all the ages, 
the craving would have died out. 

In associating his mind with the 
Eternal, man finds that which meets the 
needs of his moral and emotional nature; 
his experience is that the Everlasting 
Reality is concerned with those spiritual 
values which make our human nature 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 63 


complete and glorious. Only in God does 
he find life’s greatest questions answered. 

But is Mr. Tyndall correct in claiming 
for science the knowing faculties and in 
intimating that the creative faculties, used 
in our loftiest moments, give us some- 
thing precious, indeed, but not fairly en- 
titled to be called knowledge? Does science 
have knowledge and religion only faith? 

This distinction will be treated in the 
next lecture. 







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WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT 
WE BELIEVE 


In discussing so vital a theme as that 
which now engages us we must guard our- 
selves against the tendency to claim too 
much knowledge. Sir Leslie Stephen as- 
serted that “‘some theologians define the 
nature of the Almighty with an accuracy 
from which modest naturalists would 
shrink in describing the genesis of a black 
Decticw ay clatculiivi creates jarten ally 
and we cannot aspire to throw the girdle 
of our thoughts around the Everlasting, 
nor speak too confidently of the ways of 
One whose thoughts are as far above our 
thoughts as the heavens are higher than 
the earth. Human knowledge occupies an 
intermediate station between omniscience 
and nescience, with the _ probabilities 
favoring nearness to the lower level. 


68 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


Nevertheless at the heart of religion is the 
firm conviction that man in his spiritual 
life penetrates beneath the semblence of 
things to Reality. He may know in part, 
but a part he knows; he may see through 
a glass darkly, but he sees. 

In the days of her bigotry the church 
asserted infallible knowledge in many de- 
partments of interest, discrediting science 
as a black art, the craft of the Devil. But 
human nature is the same in the labora- 
tory as in the pulpit, and many scientists 
today are as bigoted as was ever a medi- 
eval monk. To many of them “science is 
all mud and religion is all mist.” What 
they do not know is not knowledge. So 
prevalent is the tendency to affirm that 
life in all its multitudinous activities—its 
moral ideals, its poetry, its soul-hunger 
—can be explained by a materialistic phil- 
osophy that Sir Oliver Lodge a few years 
ago, in a presidential address delivered be- 
fore the British Association, thought fit to 
say to his fellow scientists: “It is my func- 
tion to remind you and myself that our 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 69 


studies do not exhaust the universe, and 
if we dogmatise in the opposite direction 
and say that we can reduce everything to 
physics and chemistry, we gibbet ourselves 
as ludicrously narrow pedants, and are 
falling short of the richness of our human 
birthright,’ It has taken the church’) a 
long time to learn that there are many 
ways to God, and scientists, not a few, 
have still to learn that the faculties anc 
the methods they employ are not the only 
road to genuine knowledge. “Uno itinere 
non potest pervemire ad tam grande secre- 
tum.” “Humbug is humbug,” wrote Wil- 
liam James, “even though it bear a scien- 
tific name.” 

Yet many men, both in science and out 
of it, who are neither narrow-minded nor 
materialistic, are inclined to confine the 
word “knowledge” to the sphere of the 
sciences. Mr. Tyndall, in the eloquent 
words quoted at the end of the last lec- 
ture, while fully recognizing that poets, 
musicians, and saints have commerce with 
a world that is not the proper domain of 


70 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


science, but supplementary to it, is care- 
ful to claim the knowing faculties for 
science, and to grant to religion insights 
and experiences, noble indeed, loftier in 
their range than those given by science, 
yet not strictly entitled to be designated 
as knowledge. He is right in the state- 
ment that fixity of conception is impossi- 
ble to religion, for she deals with the Inf- 
nite. He is right in making a distinction 
between the faculties used in science and 
those used in religion. He is right in an 
assertion which he makes in an address on 
the “Scientific Use of the Imagination” 
that the “creative” faculties—by which he 
means the united action of the reason and 
the imagination—‘“lead us into a world 
not less real than that of the senses and of 
which the world of the senses is the sug- 
gestion, and to a great extent, the out- 
come.”’ But is he quite justified in con- 
cealing in the adjective “creative” the fact 
that the intuitions of the reason lay hold 
of reality, and in giving to the word 
“know” its full significance in connection 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 71 


with the report of the senses? Without 
the “creative” faculties “Newton never 
would have invented fluxions, nor Davy 
have decomposed the earths and alkalies, 
nor would Columbus have found .another 
continent.” He submerges the faith that 
is in science under the word “knowing”’ 
and the knowledge that is in religion 
under the word “creative.” 

Now knowledge is a very substantial 
word; it connotes something solid. One 
Can buildipon ut entrust’ his life) to’ it, 
without hesitation. It is the sovereign, 
ultimate word in any department of 
thought. It is of such inestimable merit 
that it seems to me the scientists are try- 
ing to smuggle it into their camp under 
the cover of very arbitrary and plausible 
definitions, which they themselves make, 
and to leave religion something “just as 
good,” but which does not carry with it 
the same confidence and power as the 
word “knowledge.” So valuable is it that 
they wish the exclusive right to it. 

As I have said, it is the scientists them- 
selves who lay claim to the use of the 


72 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


knowing faculties in their work. Cer- 
tainly no group of experts in other fields, 
if asked to define the word “knowledge,” 
would give it to science as a peculiar pos- 
session. And surely religion will never 
consent to have the word dwell perma- 
nently outside her domain. It has been 
hers from the beginning, and it is the only 
word that will accurately describe her 
experiences. One cannot imagine Jesus 
of Nazareth admitting: “I know Jerusa- 
lem and the mountains round about, for 
my eyes see them, but God and the eternal 
city of the spirit are the objects of faith. 
I know the things that are seen, but the 
things which are unseen I believe.” He 
never would have assented to Tennyson’s 
lines 
“We have but faith, we may not know 
For knowledge is of things we see.” 

On the contrary he would have affirmed 
that he knew God better than he knew the 
temple and the high priest. He would 
never for a moment have tolerated the 
idea that the senses bring us nearer Re- 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 73 


ality than does the vision of the pure 
heart. He considered knowledge to be the 
sovereign reward of fidelity, giving abun- 
dance to the life that now is and beatitude 
to that which is hereafter. 

Neither can we imagine one of the 
elorious succession of apostles, prophets 
and saints who would think of consenting 
to the statement that they had more cer- 
tainty of what their eyes saw and their 
hands handled than of a Reality reported 
in their spiritual experience. 

The church thinks of herself as founded 
upon a rock and not upon the shifting 
sands of conjecture and hope. She be- 
lieves that the evidence upon which one is 
willing to live and die can only be truly 
phrased in the strongest word of which 
our language is capable. 

We claim that the difference between 
the results of scientific experimentation 
and religious experience is not the differ- 
ence between knowledge and faith, but be- 
tween two different kinds of knowledge, 
each resting on faith, each established on 


74 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


experimentation after its own kind. Sci- 
ence uses the perceptive and the distinc- 
tively intellectual faculties 1n her oper- 
ations; religion assumes that the heart has 
reasons as well as the intellect, that con- 
science is a doorway into reality, that the 
imagination and the will are also pathways 
to truth. Religion employs a larger por- 
tion of human nature in the discovery of 
truth than does science. and she believes 
that she touches a wider environment. 

In order to make our discussion as clear 
as possible, let us start with a definition of 
certainty and knowledge. Certainty is an 
assured conviction that something is so 
and not otherwise. It is entirely subjec- 
tive and may be an illusion. Knowledge 
is to have assurance upon proper evidence 
that one’s mental apprehensions agree 
with reality. Subjectively there is cer- 
tainty, objectively there is reality; the 
connecting link is proper evidence that the 
thought tallies with the thing. 

The conviction we are seeking to estab- 
lish is that religious experience creates a 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 75 


joyous certitude in the breasts of the 
faithful, the certitude of the individual is 
repeated in a countless multitude and 
issues in characters which have all the 
credentials of truth. These multiplied 
experiences, these substantial and radiant 
characters, constitute proper evidence that 
the inner conviction is not entirely alien 
to the outer reality. Therefore the saints 
as well as the scientists are able to say: 
“We know.” 

Let us ask to what degree science has 
knowledge. She begins with an act of 
faith, faith in the general trustworthiness 
of the sense perceptions, faith in those 
mental powers which go beyond sense ob- 
servation into the region where things are 
intellectually discerned, faith in an exter- 
nal world that is dependable and capable 
of interpretation. By precise observation, 
experiment, and careful deduction she 
builds up a body of fact and truth which 
she calls knowledge, and rightly so. But 
it is knowledge of a limited kind, knowl- 
edge of phenomena and of modes of be- 


76 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


havior, not of meanings, not of ultimate 
realities. She uses only those aspects of 
reality which she needs in her work. The 
laws of nature, as science describes them, 
represent, but are not identical with, the 
laws of nature as they really are. She 
takes only those serviceable features of 
phenomena which she can employ for her 
purposes. But her results are substantial 
enough, and constitute a body of facts and 
laws sufficiently valid to sustain our 
houses, our factories, our civilization. 
But the scientist does not cover the 
whole of life with his method, or with his 
knowledge. The poet, the musician, the 
prophet have other fields of interest; they 
live in a world as real as his, a world with 
its actualities perceived by faculties which 
he does not use, but which they are conf- 
dent yield valid knowledge. They deal 
not so much with facts as with values and 
forces which are spiritually discerned, 
which are established in confidence, not by 
experiment, but by experience. We are 
all aware of this world which is above 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 77 


sense phenomena. We are as certain of 
the value of poetry as we are of Ford cars. 
The sighs of love have shaken men as per- 
ceptibly as the winds of heaven. “Before 
the saint,” says Neitzche, “the strongest 
men in history have always bowed down 
reverently because they divine beyond his 
wretched appearance a superior force that 
will match itself against them.” The 
spiritual energy which passes from the 
saint and conquers the will of the strong 
man is as real as the pressure of steam. 
A transforming power issues from the 
holiness of Jesus which is as indisputable 
as a volt of electricity. We are as sure of 
this realm of spiritual values and forces 
Comoe cartiupeticatimoutrmiteer, ») Lhe 
power of character is as much a part of 
the nature of things as dynamite, and can 
be equally verified. Buddha, Confucius, 
Christ founded world civilizations, and 
the spiritual and moral energies they re- 
leased are as truly a part of the world 
order as the Mississippi or the Amazon. 
Spontaneously and habitually we use 


78 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


the word knowledge in connection with 
these aesthetic and ethical experiences. 
Witness the forcible words which Huxley 
wrote to Kingsley: “The more intimately 
I know the lives of other men (to say 
nothing of my own) the more obvious it is 
to me that the wicked does not flourish nor 
is the righteous punished. But for this to 
be clear we must bear in mind what almost 
all forget, that the rewards of life are 
contingent upon obedience to the whole 
law—physical as well as moral—and that 
moral obedience will not atone for phys- 
ical sin, or vice versa. 

“The ledger of the Almighty is strictly 
kept, and every one of us has the balance 
of his operations paid over to him at the 
end of every moment of his existence. 

The absolute justice of the sys- 
tem of things is as clear to me as any 
scientific fact. The gravitation of sin to | 
sorrow is as certain as that of the earth 
to the sun, and more so—for experimental 
proof of the fact is within reach of us all 
—nay is before us all in our own lives, if 
we had but eyes to see it.”’ 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 79 


My contention is that if a distinguished 
scientist, as a result of long years of ob- 
servation and experience, can affirm that 
he is as sure of the absolute justice of the 
system of things as he is of any scientific 
fact, and is more certain that sin leads to 
sorrow than he is of the gravitation of 
the earth to the sun, because it is subject 
to experimental proof within the reach of 
every one, then such certainty can be ex- 
pressed only by the strongest and most 
dependable word in our language. It 
must be either knowledge or a more vigor- 
ous word. Faith, certainty, belief, convic- 
tion are weaker words; they are not com- 
prehensive or vital enough for what 
occurs in our experience. 

With the affirmation of dependable 
knowledge of material things and of moral 
facts and forces many stop and decline to 
go further. God is to them the Mystery 
whose veil no man can remove. They call 
themselves agnostics. They contemplate 
the Mystery with an awe akin to worship, 
but to the most important and insistent 


80 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


questions which the human mind can ask 
they reply: “I do not know.” 

Yet most men are not content to leave 
these deep interrogations of the spirit en- 
tirely unanswered. They cannot be per- 
suaded that man can know so much about 
material things and so little regarding the 
things which concern him most. They 
cannot believe that this infinitely rich un1- 
verse has such abundant satisfaction for 
their physical needs and nothing for their 
deepest spiritual necessities. Therefore, 
with the yearning of a pilgrim for his 
distant home, they turn to the Mystery 
from which they emerged, and whose aw- 
ful shadow encloses their lives, to find a 
refuge in the day of trouble, explanation 
of the meaning of life, and re-enforce- 
ment to meet the difficulties of the journey. 

Men need God, they trust him, they 
seek to learn his will and obey him. The 
steps one takes in solving his religious 
problems are much the same as those he 
takes in solving his scientific problems. In 
science we trust our sense perceptions and 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 81 


the conclusions of our intellect. In relig- 
ion we trust our spiritual intuitions and 
the validity of the claims of our moral and 
emotional natures. Religious faith is our 
reason acting bravely in the presence of 
life’s gravest problems. It is a valor of 
soul which makes us commit the highest 
in ourselves to what we believe is the 
Highest in the universe. 

To give unity to our thought and faith 
we conceive the Supreme Power which 
science recognizes and the Supreme 
Worth which ethics knows to be manifes- 
tations of the one Reality from which all 
things proceed. We assume that good- 
ness and righteousness are not human 
conventions, but are expressions of the 
character of God. And when we attempt 
to form some conception of the nature of 
the Eternal we know no better way than 
to do precisely what the prophets of Israel 
did. We interpret him by his most ex- 
alted manifestation—the spirit of a right- 
eous and holy man. We use the highest 
symbol we possess to frame our thought 


82 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


of the Infinite. To us the loftiest spiritual 
being in humanity—the being of highest 
worth—must be God manifest in the flesh. 
The glory which shines in the face of the 
noblest of the sons of men we take to be 
the raying forth of the glory of God. 

To Christians the fulness of that glory 
is seen in Jesus Christ. Because the light 
which issues from his mind solves our 
most vital problems, because his spirit, 
whenever it is reproduced in men, brings 
the redemption which is humanity’s great- 
est need, we believe we have found a 
manifestation of the Everlasting Reality. 
This light is the true Light, not an illusion, 
not a temporary flash of splendor, but the 
steady shining of the Ultimate Truth. 

Now this faith upon which our religion 
is founded is as bold, as rational, and as 
comprehensive as any scientific general- 
ization. Will it stand the test of experi- 
ence? Can this faith prove its truth by 
its effects upon life? 

If one man tries it out and finds that it 
will work, he will have an inner certitude 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 83 


Obits truthiy ile willisayy> Libelievewiy It 
he finds that his experience has been re- 
peated in ten thousand times ten thousand 
lives which have followed the same pro- 
cedure then he will exclaim, ‘““We know!’ 
Know, not all about God, but know God 
to the extent that he comes into human 
experience, know him as a reality because 
he produces real effects. For surely vir. 
tues of highest worth are not nurtured 
on what is entirely illusion. 

This faith that the universe is friendly 
will certainly stand the test of experience. 
Mr. Tyndall gives at the close of his ad- 
dress) upon, the) scientific’) Use of ithe 
Imagination” what seems to be a personal 
experience. ) 

““Two things’ said Immanuel Kant, 
‘fill me with awe; the starry heavens, and 
the sense of moral responsibility in man.’ 
And in his hours of health and strength 
and sanity, when the stroke of action has 
ceased, and the pause of reflection has set 
in, the scientific investigator finds himself 
overshadowed by the same awe. Break- 


84 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


ing contact with the hampering details of 
earth, it associates him with a Power, 
which gives fulness and tone to his ex- 
istence, but which he can neither analyse 
nor comprehend.” He cannot, indeed, 
analyse and comprehend the Power, but 
he can analyse his experience with the 
Power! The “fulness and tone” which 
come when the reflecting mind associates 
itself with God disclose something of his 
majesty and its outflowing energy. As 
this experience is not peculiar to Pro- 
fessor Tyndall, but is universal, it shows 
that quality which the religious man not 
inappropriately calls the divine grace. 
When a man vitally associates himself 
with “that Power which alone is great’ 
certain spiritual changes take place within 
him. From being, in the language of Pro- 
fessor James, “consciously wrong, inferior 
and unhappy; he becomes consciously 
right, superior and happy.” Science can 
trace the process, but only religion can 
perform the miracle. Emerson gives a 
similar experience. “It is a secret which 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 85 


every inteliectual man quickly learns, that 
beyond the energy of his personal con- 
scious intellect he is capable of a new 
energy (as of an intellect doubled on it- 
self) by abandonment to the nature of 
things; that besides his power as an indi- 
vidual man, there is a great public power, 
upon which he can draw, by unlocking at 
all risks his human doors, and suffering 
the etherial tides to roll and circulate 
through him.” If the beauty of the starry 
heavens above us, the sense of moral re- 
sponsibility within us, the aspirations of 
our better natures towards ideals of per- 
fection, the fulness and tone which come 
when the pause of reflection has set in, 
give us no true insight into the nature of 
that Power which sustains man and the 
universe, then what do they give us? 

But religious faith sweeps farther and 
higher than such experiences as I have 
quoted. It postulates a divine benignity 
which cares for the individual, and works 
with boundless grace even through the 
wrath and terror of the world. Men in 


86 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


vast numbers have actually ventured 
everything on the hypothesis that in liv- 
ing a life of love they were reproducing 
in a measure the divine nature, and they 
have not been put to confusion. If their 
faith were vain, then when they took the 
leap they would have fallen into vacuity, 
but their concurrent testimony has been 
that they found a Rock beneath their feet. 
If this faith in a divine Providence were 
a delusion, then the men who came under 
its baleful influence would have deformed 
and brittle characters. On the contrary 
theirs are the most firm-fibred and lus- 
trous characters the world has produced. 
Those who have sent the roots of their 
being down most deeply into the faith of 
a divine Love have been the most revered 
men in history. The men who brought 
back the grapes of Escol may have known 
little about Canaan and the processes of 
grape culture, but they knew that there 
was soil in Palestine and that it was good, 
the lusciousness of the grapes was suff- 
cient evidence. 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 87 


Religious faith would have vanished 
from the world long ago, if it had put one 
out of joint with the Nature of Things. 
If no help had ever come from the Unseen, 
the impulse to pray would long ago have 
died out. The saints may be confused 
and confusing in their speech about re- 
ligion, but with unanimity they report the 
same experience. Christians sing in 
twentieth century America psalms which 
were written in Asia three thousand years 
ago. Catholics and Protestant use the 
same prayers and the same hymns. Their 
creeds differ, but they touch the same 
Reality, and experience the same peace 
and spiritual liberty. 

Reason, acting valorously on the as- 
sumption that the Soul of the Universe 
abundantly meets every need of the soul 
of man, is not duped, it obtains through 
experience a strong inner certainty, and 
this inner certainty the saint finds is not a 
private possession, but is shared by a 
ereat host whom no man can number. 
He accepts multiplied experience as proper 


88 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


evidence that the inner certitude reflects a 
Reality and is genuine knowledge. He 
may not have fixity of conception, but he 
knows God. 

I listened the other day to a cultivated 
man who is actually living a life of love. 
He is practising the incarnation. Going 
down into the slums, he is living among a 
vicious and ignorant people for the sole 
purpose of conforming them to Jesus 
Christ. By an act of faith he has com- 
mitted everything he has and is to the re- 
demptive power of love. Here is faith in 
a good God put to the severest test. What 
is the result? He has found there in the 
mud and scum of things spiritual strength, 
liberty, peace, and a strong, calm char- 
acter. He has also learned in that school 
of tough experience that there is some- 
thing divine in the most degraded men 
that, touched by the energies of love, will 
make them new creatures. After fifteen 
years of such work could that man be per- 
suaded to say: “I know the dirt of these 
streets, but I can only affirm a faith that 


IN AN AGE OF §CIENCE 89 


love is of God.” On the contrary he 1s 
more sure that through the passion of love 
he has found the Everlasting Strength 
and Mercy than he is sure of the filth of 
the street. The only word strong enough 
to express his experience is the word 
“know,” and one looking at the granite 
strength and gentle sweetness of a charac- 
ter refined in such conditions is convinced 
that this manhood is not nurtured on illu- 
sions. His intellectual conceptions may 
be very limited, but he has drawn his 
nutriment from Reality. 

What I wish to claim is this: Science 
does not have knowledge and religion 
Ssimplymtaitin » Dhevlover,theartist,; ‘the 
musician know, so does the saint. Relig- 
ion has always used the word ‘“knowl- 
edge” freely and always will, because no 
lesser term expresses her experiences. 
Both science and religion begin with an 
act of faith. Both reach results. Those 
of science are sufficiently verified for a 
man to base his actions and his civiliza- 
tion upon them. Those of religion are so 


90 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


tested that one can build his whole life 
upon them with ever increasing satisfac- 
tion both to his mind and to his soul. 

There is this difference to be noted 
between scientific and religious knowl- 
edge. A scientific experiment may be per- 
formed in an hour and its results demon- 
strated, but moral and spiritual truths 
require centuries for their vindication. 
We believe in liberty so implicitly that we 
consider no sacrifice too great to conserve 
it, yet to establish beyond cavil that free- 
dom of thought and speech 1s better than 
intellectual servitude would require the 
whole range of human history. Ina very 
short time you can prove that two atoms 
of hydrogen will unite with one of oxygen 
to form water; but to validate the state- 
ment that righteousness exalteth a nation 
demands the experience of many gener- 
ations. Yet am I more positive of the 
one than of the other? Shall I affirm of 
the former, “I know,” and of the latter, 
“T believe’? Any such distinction would 
do violence to our convictions and to our 
habitual use of language. 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 91 


Moreover, scientific knowledge is inde- 
pendent of the personal equation. A mur- 
derer can perform a chemical experiment 
as well as a saint. Religion on the other 
hand, is more personal. Its knowledge is 
conditional on character. Only the pure 
in heart can see God; only the unselfish 
and obedient can realize his love. 

Our moods have much to do with all our 
apprehensions of spiritual values. We 
live on the border line of the physical and 
the spiritual. If we were wholly of the 
earth, we should never dream of the 
higher realities. If we were wholly spirit- 
ual, we should never doubt them. As we 
belong partly to the seen and partly to 
the unseen, vision alternates with doubt. 
On these conditions we hold our knowl- 
edge. The perception of ethical and re- 
ligious values and forces is so vitally 
influenced by our moral and spiritual con- 
dition that our certitude is sometimes 
shadowed. The stars still shine, but the 
clouds cover them; God seems to forsake 
us and the walls of the celestial city lose 


92 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


their lustre. This condition we recognize 
and take account of, as we do the mist 
which obscures the mountains, the ebb and 
the flow of the ocean. 

As if to counter-balance this we find 
that religious knowledge is more intimate 
than scientific knowledge. The mathema- 
tician knows about his circles and angles; 
the musician knows much about music, he 
also knows music. The lover knows love; 
the saint tastes the very flavor of holi- 
ness. The scientist knows something 
about the forces with which he deals; the 
religious man knows the quality of that 
which he apprehends; he learns something 
of the nature of that which produces the 
emotion. Thus religious apprehension 
reaches nearer the heart of its object than 
scientific knowledge. 

In another way religious knowledge is 
superior to scientific. Science deals with 
the world out there beyond us. It knows 
only symbols of reality which are inter- 
preted to the consciousness through the 
senses. But when we deal with what 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 93 


takes place in our own inner nature, we 
send the shaft down deeper into Reality. 
There, if anywhere, we surprise Reality 
unveiled. “By being religious,” says Pro- 
fessor James, “we establish ourselves in 
the possession of Ultimate Reality at the 
only point at which reality has been given 
us to guard.” 

Knowledge is religion’s normal word. 
Without it her scriptures are tame, her 
teachings ineffectual, and her promises 
pallid. “If any man willeth to do his will, 
he shall know of the teachings”; “Ye shall 
know the truth and the truth shall make 
Wonsireca we Uilississite eternal to know 
thee, the only living and true God, and 
Jesus Christ whom thou has sent.” 
“Every one therefore which heareth these 
words of mine, and doeth them, shall be 
likened unto a wise man, which built his 
house upon the rock.” Religion is indeed 
conceived in faith, but 

“The steps of faith 


Fall on a seeming void, and find 
The rock beneath.” 


94 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


These lectures have been concerned 
largely with our knowledge of God. I 
cannot close, however, without saying a 
word about our certitude of redemption 
through Christ. Most of us are willing to 
admit that he is the divinest spirit within 
our view, but his claims are staggering, 
and we are often sorely puzzled. Is he 
rightfully the Lord ‘ot our lives? Yes 
for we must needs love and obey the high- 
est when we see it. Whether he be God 
incarnate, or humanity realized, he com- 
mands us. We must “give the best we 
have to the best we know.” 

Can he redeem us from the power and 
the love of sinr The answer need not be 
theoretical. It is possible to put him to 
the most searching test. For a month try 
to reproduce his mind, his purpose and 
disposition. Give his spirit sovereign 
control for four weeks, and what will be 
the result! At the end of that experiment 
you will be purer in heart, stronger in 
will, more sympathetic in feeling. You 
will also be persuaded that his spirit is not 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 95 


only redemptive, but is the most revo- 
lutionary power ever let loose in your 
lite’ or fin!) history.) ;Practice; this spirit 
for a life-time and you will exclaim at the 
end; “I know whom I have believed, and 
am persuaded that he is able to keep that 
which I have committed unto him.” Your 
ideas about him may be very imperfect, 
but you will know him and the quality of 
his manhood. The certitude of his re- 
demptive power will reach to the very 
innermost sanctuary of your being. Hor- 
ace Bushnell, one of the loftiest spiritual 
geniuses ever produced in this country, 
said after years of discipleship: “I know 
Jesus Christ better than I know any man 
in Hartford.” If you will live intimately 
within the circle of his influence, you will 
both know him better than you know your 
neighbor, and you will have a calm assur- 
ance that the light that is in him is no will- 
o-the-wisp exhaled from the swamps of 
human superstition, but issues from the 
central throne of Power. You will also 
find how true are these words of Brown- 


ing: 


96 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


“I say, the acknowledgement of God in Christ 
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 

All questions in the earth and out of it, 

And has so far advanced thee to be wise.” 


A future existence must be a matter of 
lofty faith, not of certitude. Jesus had 
little to say regarding the life hereafter. 
He did not argue about it, he assumed it. 
His purpose was to produce in men a cer- 
tain quality of life which is independent 
of the flight of time. Truth, righteous- 
ness, goodness do not belong to the tempo- 
ral order, and our Lord would have the 
spirit of man so incorporated into truth, 
goodness, righteousness, that it would be 
permeated with their vitality and radi- 
ance. This kind of life he called the 
“eternal life’ because it is unrelated to 
temporal standards, it is fed on the Un- 
seen. One who lives the eternal life quite 
naturally assumes immortality, as an 
architect presupposes space when he pro- 
jects a building. 

This belief in the future life may have 
originated, as many students claim, in the 
savage dreaming of his dead, but the 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 97 


cause of its persistence does not lie in hu- 
man superstition. It rests on the deep 
needs of our hearts and consciences. Life 
as we know it is so tragically fragmentary 
that we naturally expect its completion 
elsewhere. Man seems too richly endowed 
for the short years of his earthly life. If 
he is only a higher order of animal, then 
take from him his reason and give him a 
few keen instincts, take away his imagina- 
tion and his ideals and put in their place 
some healthy appetites, and he would be 
far better fitted for happiness in this 
world. If there is nothing beyond these 
hills of time, the Creator has but tor- 
mented his creature by implanting con- 
science and a dream of the perfect. He 
has made man too great for his environ- 
ment and therefore unhappy. 

We believe, moreover, that the wages 
of sin is death; we cannot believe that the 
wages of virtue is dust. Here are two 
young men in battle. One in obedience to 
the noblest impulse within him gives his 
life at the call of duty; the other skulks to 


98 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


a place of safety and preserves his life by 
faithlessness. What a topsy-turvy uni- 
verse this would be if the wages of virtue 
is annihilation, and the wages of sin is 
life! 

Science can neither affirm nor deny im- 
mortality, but she has opened great spaces 
for this faith to live in. A man trained 
to our modern world-vision, gazing back 
over the long, toilsome, costly process 
from the fire mist up to man, and from 
primitive man to our present highly or- 
ganized society, cannot readily believe 
that he is contemplating the haphazard 
whirl of unintelligent forces, a riot of 
chance! Rather he detects an increasing 
purpose running through the ages, work- 
ing towards man and the development of 
the race. Surely the unfolding purpose is 
prophetic of an outcome worthy of the 
process. If materialism is right, and hu- 
manity returns to the dust from whence it 
came, and the earth is at last only a burned 
out cinder; if the struggle of the ages, the 
prayers of the holy, the sacrifices of the 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 99 


martyrs, the devotion of the brave, ulti- 
mate in dust and ashes, then we are put to 
“permanent intellectual confusion.” The 
ages have toiled and brought forth noth- 
ing. The Eternal has blown a soap bub- 
ble, and painted it with wondrous colors 
at awful cost of agony to the iridescent 
figures, and then allowed it to burst! The 
wisdom, the power, the sacrificial love re- 
vealed in the long and orderly upward 
movement create the expectation that the 
culmination will be worthy of the cost. 
The evolutionary hypothesis gives to 
this argument another turn. There was 
a time when the highest form of life upon 
the planet was a jelly-like mass, floating 
about in the water. It was without power 
of locomotion, sightless, senseless, capable 
only of absorbing such food particles as 
the primeval ocean drifted against it. But 
the push of nature was init. As the cen- 
turies and milleniums passed, life acquired 
the power of locomotion, it developed the 
faculty of vision, it accumulated experi- 
ences, becoming conscious and then self 


100 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


conscious; it attained the noble faculty of 
reason; it distinguished sensations, and 
choosing between them, became aware of 
freedom; it formed glorious ideals of a 
nobler self; it began to crave to be fash- 
ioned in the likeness of the Perfect 
Righteousness, to commune with the Infi- 
nite Goodness, and to crown all these 
achievements it dreamed of immortality! 
In this steady acquisition of riches there 
is a forshadowing of the future. If life 
in its long upward journey has acquired 
locomotion, sense-perception, reason, con- 
sciousness, self-determination, a feeling of 
moral responsibility, it is not incredible 
that when it thirsts for immortality the 
craving is a prophecy that the desire will 
be satisfied. This faith has 
“great allies. 

Its friends are exultations, agonies, 

And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.” 

In a brief space let me sum up the argu- 
ment of this lecture. The contrast be- 
tween science and religion is not a contrast 
between knowledge and belief, but be- 


IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE 101 


tween two different kinds of knowledge. 
Religion can use the word “know” as 
legitimately as science. When we become 
aware of ourselves we are aware of a 
Power not ourselves. By cooperating 
with this Power we can develop charac- 
ters of moral strength and _ spiritual 
beauty. Virtue and its transforming ener- 
gies we know as well as we know any 
scientific fact, even better for we have the 
sure test of daily experience. Experience 
warrants us in affirming that God is the 
“Power, not ourselves, which makes for 
righteousness.” We take a step further. 
Power is an anthropomorphic term, and so 
is personal spirit, but the latter is more 
significant, it represents higher worth. 
God cannot be inferior to the highest sym- 
bol we use in interpreting him. God can- 
not be less than personal, he may be infi- 
nitely more. By faith, therefore, we think 
of him as a living Spirit operating through 
the electric framework of the world. When 
we seek him as the Father of our spirit in 
whom dwells all that we desire, we put this 


102 RELIGIOUS CERTITUDE 


belief to the searching test of life. Thus 
trusting and obeying we meet with those 
responses which change faith into an as- 
surance which often finds even the word 
“know” too feeble to express the experi- 
ence. 

We may know the redemptive energies 
summed up under the name of Jesus 
Christ, and our deepening knowledge of 
him will lead to a high faith in the sig; 
nificance of his nature. 

Science can neither affirm, nor deny a 
life hereafter, but if man in his long jour- 
ney has made such marvelous progress, 
and now aspires to something further on, 
it is a rational faith to believe that when 

“The white sail of the soul 

Rounds the mystic cape, 

The promontory death,” 
it will move in brave adventure over the 
deep until it comes to a blessed country 
where a glorious company look upon the 
very face of God. 









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